Uninstalling Cygwin from a harddisk mounted to another computer

Jens Scheidtmann Jens.Scheidtmann@gmail.com
Mon Dec 31 10:39:00 GMT 2012


Dear all,

I had difficulties removing cygwin from a harddisk which was attached to another
windows computer, due to a failure of the primary computer.

Especially the ~/.ssh directories were paticularly restistant and those were the
folders I had to take care of. Cygwin was installed on an NTFS file system.  

Cause of the problem:
The GUIDs of the users of the primary computer were not present on the computer
from which I tried to remove cygwin, so I got "Permission denied" errors from
Windows explorer. 

Resolution:
Take ownership of the files and folders. Reset permissions for the folder and
files. This can be accomplished on the command line by:

1. Open cmd.exe as administrator

2. Take ownership: 
     $ takeown /f "c:\cygwin" /r /d Y
(Note: last parameter answers Yes to all questions, but is locale dependend. I
had to use "J" instead. YMMV.)

3. Reset permissions:
     $ icacls "c:\cygwin" /T /Q /C /reset

Best Regards,

Jens 




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